She'll Make Me Work In This

She'll make me work in this, she will,
With knuckles blue and crusted lips,
She'll make me toil and bend,
And hack at roots and thorns and barbed canes,
Which strengthen fast to come again

She'll make me prune that lanky shrub,
With blunted tools to slash and slit,
While that Eastern monster loiters still,
To burn its cuts, to finish it

She'll make me dig where teeth of men,
May lie among the barracks of pernicious weeds,
To cut a branch and hope it bleeds,
Hot tea for all who'er stiff and cold,
I'll drink it down in frenzied haste,
Before the wind blows out its taste

On these raw days I'll crouch and fight,
Where whippets wouldn't last the night,
She'll make me spread the khaki muck,
From plastic bags piled on the truck,
And robins come to pick and sing,
Determined for it to be spring

There's nowhere that the beast won't go,
It drills into my swaddled feet,
It lashes right through woollen scarves,
And thermal tops from Uniqlo

She'll make me work in this,
While office workers sit and surf,
The Daily Mail website's right-hand-side,
Where hungry eyes can't get enough,
Of photographs of nothingness

She'll make me work in this,
Like humans have toiled for thousands of years,
In searing heat and freezing cold,
But they died young, it made them old
And I am lazy, truth be told